


fracture

by CopperCaravan



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2019-03-06 08:58:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13407840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperCaravan/pseuds/CopperCaravan
Summary: Mahariel discovers that Anders is gone. Mahariel discovers that Justice is gone. Mahariel discovers that they are both gone together.





	fracture

**Author's Note:**

> no lets be real its dribble but I'm making sure I write *something* regularly and this is today's; also I might add onto it tomorrow idk but right now it's lit just mahariel has several crushing realizations at once

Mahariel realizes that Anders and Justice are missing only minutes before Stroud storms in, somewhere between outrage and incredulity.

She’s not _surprised_ Anders left, not really, but she had hoped he wouldn’t. She’d hoped that after everything—well, as much as he’d complained about being here, about being a Warden, he’d stayed. She’d given him every opportunity to go, from the moment Anora’s retinue disappeared over the hill of the road to the Joining, to the templars in Amaranthine, to the final delve into the Deep Roads. Now that the hard part’s over, she’d just fallen into assuming he had no more reason to run.

But then, they promised her that Denerim would be the hard part, that the archdemon would be the end of it.

So maybe he took a page from her book and knew exactly when to leave. She doesn’t fault him for it; she only misses him. She only wishes he’d told her, wishes she’d said goodbye at least. But then, she’s never been good at saying goodbye. Likely, she’d have just tried to make him see that he could stay, that she would help, that he was safe—whatever he’d needed to hear, whatever he’d needed to do, she’d have done that because she cannot watch things end with any grace. She has to fight and claw and beg to keep them as whole as she can, fractured as they are.

And Justice—the thought had never even occurred to her. She’d known, of course, that Kristoff’s body was decaying quickly. She’d known he was angry with her, with himself, after she’d ordered Amaranthine razed to the ground. She’d known how the new recruits treated him, how they looked at him, how most could barely stand to be indoors with the smell of death. But she had never imagined that he wouldn’t be at her side.

He’d begun to remind her of Tamlen, the mottled skin and the sunken cheeks, sightless eyes cloudy with a living death. Maybe she should have known that it would be unbearable for him and maybe she should have known that there was no way back from it.

Like Anders, perhaps he made the right call: escaping before she could sink her teeth in, before she could grab hold with neither the ability nor the desire to ever let them go.

She knows her face betrays her grief, betrays everything inside her, but Nathaniel’s face says something different. Uncertainty about something that is certain.

And then there’s Stroud. Then there’s too many dead wardens—too many dead templars—in a burnt down acre of land less than a mile from the Vigil.

Doesn’t stop the hurt, just makes the worry and regret all the greater.

She’d been putting it off. Leaving the Vigil. She’d known it was coming—since the very first moment it’d begun to feel anything like a home, she’d known it wouldn’t last. But there’s no putting it off now, no more distractions, no more persuasions, no more deals. The Order has questions, Stroud has orders, and she has answering to do—for herself, for the dead and, worse perhaps, for the living.


End file.
